They are less interesting than ranged guys because the animations are a bit crap and a bit slow. Also abilities are kind of dumbed down so you never get any synergies going on.

Also all the classes would be more fun if you were fighting bigger groups of weaker mobs.

Yes, this, a lot.

The Sith Juggernaut is an absolute cunt compared to the BH. Tanking is a world of difference, it's like the Old Vanilla Warrior Versus the New Paladin. The bounty hunter has cool damage doing AoE coming out his fucking arsehole with more utility than you can shake a stick at and the Sith can barely shout. The low level instance I ran with the wife last night was utterly fucking painful because of it.

Also, NO synergies at all yet apart from the ever amusing 'choke, hilt bash' The fact that mobs have shittons of hitpoints isn't so immersion breaking on ranged chaps because, well, shields, but it's just fucking stupid to be banging away at someone with the glowing lolly for 10 minutes. It takes it from exciting to mundane.

Also I guess Bioware got sick of people complaining about having no use for Legacy beyond Legacy 25, so they made the third rank of the cooldown reduction to the new Priority Transport: Personal Starship thing require Legacy 50. I'm legacy 48.

Even better, the Starship Priority Transport cooldown legacy is broken. Whenever you log out, any purchased ranks disappear. Bioware's acknowledged it's a problem and it'll get fixed, but uh... don't spend any cartel coins on it like some of my guildmates did.

Day one of 50 pvp was pretty much like sub50 pvp: 2 wins 1 loss, with 2 of the matches being facerolls (I was actually on the winning team in huttball!!). So I think I'm going to keep doing this for awhile. I really enjoy my shadow tank. So much so I've hardly played my other chars except to craft and pvp a bit.

Day one of 50 pvp was pretty much like sub50 pvp: 2 wins 1 loss, with 2 of the matches being facerolls (I was actually on the winning team in huttball!!). So I think I'm going to keep doing this for awhile. I really enjoy my shadow tank. So much so I've hardly played my other chars except to craft and pvp a bit.

Your 50 PvP experience will get worse. Much worse, unless the Rep/Sith numbers are balanced (not likely). Just wait until you look at the HP of a DPS caster or healer in the neighborhood of 23K while your fresh 50 wearing the newbie PvP gear is around 15K. It's awesome getting smoked by a kitted out Marauder in about 3 seconds and not doing a single bit of damage against them.

The hopping does nothing but slow them down. It doesn't affect your hit or miss. PvP, from 10-49, is fun - probably peaking from about L34 to L49. Once you get 50? Not so much. If you pug it at 50, there's going to be a special place in Heaven / location where you think you go when you die reserved just for you.

Ah. I almost certainly don't know you then. I play Empire 80% of my time, and I PvE 95% of that time. I only ever really do 50s PvP when a PvP-heavy guildmate manages to needle me enough that I do it just to shut him up for a while, or sometimes when I'm leveling a new alt.

The hopping does nothing but slow them down. It doesn't affect your hit or miss. PvP, from 10-49, is fun - probably peaking from about L34 to L49. Once you get 50? Not so much. If you pug it at 50, there's going to be a special place in Heaven / location where you think you go when you die reserved just for you.

Are you sure there's no LOS issues? I know I lost one fight pretty badly (sub50). I just assumed it was because I thought I was hitting him and wasn't.

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The level of pain felt whilst pugging is heavily class dependent though. I'd say his choice of Shadow tank is probably going to be infinitely better for that than say DPS commando or sage.

Well, I certainly have more fun on the shadow than I do on my heals scoundrel or commando. I'm sure I'm doing it wrong, but I don't know what.

One thing that annoys/amuses me is that I can't go 2 WZs on my shadow w/o someone trying to guard her and I think I've gotten guard exactly once total on my scoundrel and commando.

Try it out with a friend. Duel them and one of you just spaz completely out on the space bar. Then duel again and just stand there. Measure the TTK. It will be the same. No aiming = no need for bunny hopping.

The hopping does nothing but slow them down. It doesn't affect your hit or miss. PvP, from 10-49, is fun - probably peaking from about L34 to L49. Once you get 50? Not so much. If you pug it at 50, there's going to be a special place in Heaven / location where you think you go when you die reserved just for you.

Are you sure there's no LOS issues? I know I lost one fight pretty badly (sub50). I just assumed it was because I thought I was hitting him and wasn't.

LOS does come into play but that would be when they're moving past you, not moving up and down.

Yeah, the only time jumping helps is if you're ranged and want to fire off a quick instant shot from a spot below LOS (eg. in a dip in Novare, or from behind a wall shooting down in Civil War midfield).

Aside from any psychological factor (and jumping over obstacles), melee jumping only helps their target. Heck, with the auto-facing whilst casting mechanic, even running through you is only of limited value except to try and score positional attacks.

They are less interesting than ranged guys because the animations are a bit crap and a bit slow. Also abilities are kind of dumbed down so you never get any synergies going on.

Also all the classes would be more fun if you were fighting bigger groups of weaker mobs.

Yes, this, a lot.

The Sith Juggernaut is an absolute cunt compared to the BH. Tanking is a world of difference, it's like the Old Vanilla Warrior Versus the New Paladin. The bounty hunter has cool damage doing AoE coming out his fucking arsehole with more utility than you can shake a stick at and the Sith can barely shout. The low level instance I ran with the wife last night was utterly fucking painful because of it.

Also, NO synergies at all yet apart from the ever amusing 'choke, hilt bash' The fact that mobs have shittons of hitpoints isn't so immersion breaking on ranged chaps because, well, shields, but it's just fucking stupid to be banging away at someone with the glowing lolly for 10 minutes. It takes it from exciting to mundane.

If your just looking to see the SW/JK story, try out Rage (Focus for JKs). It's totally fotm and a one trick pony, but it's a really good trick. I basically one shot entire trash packs every 10 seconds or so, using like half the buttons of the tank spec.

Instead of using a dozen attacks that all do like 500 damage, I use half a dozen that all hit for like 1500+ and Smash/ForceSweep hitting ridiculous numbers in the 5k+ range. It's literally charge, crush, scream, smash, loot on the trash packs and the silver elites are dead soon after.

Two Quick points into Immortal for the free Scream after Charge and Obliterate (mini charge), then you go up the Rage tree, grabbing Obliterate, Dominate, Shockwave and Empowering Rage as soon as possible. This is when the shenanigans start to happen basically.

Dominate makes it so after every charge or obliterate, your next Smash will auto crit.

Shockwave makes it so every tick for Force Choke and Force Crush provide a stacking buff, that reduces the rage cost and increase the damage of Smash by 25% each tick, capping at 4 ticks. Flat out makes Smash free and increases it damage by 100%.

Empowering Rage makes it so Enrage (the instant rage builder cooldown) also gives you 4 instant stacks of the shockwave buff too. Also lowers Enrages cooldown.

Gear wise, you just max out Str, Power and Surge.

Then it's just charge in, use a Shockwave builder to get the 4 stack of the buff, then Smash and collect your loot. Clean up anything still alive with Scream/Slash and whatever the Execute is called. If it's still alive, just repeat the combo with the mini Charge ability, or even half the combo.

The catch with the spec, is you are squish squish mc squish, so learn to love your cooldowns/Biochem/Quinn. Your also a sad panda if you don't get to use your combo properly, but you'll have plenty of ways to re-initiate it, so that's less of an issue.

It solves the big issue I always had with JK tank tree leveling for me, the utter lack of effective AE. I basically can't play a spec that can't AE properly.

Jumping/bunnyhopping in diku MMOs does have a few advantages, mostly based on the implementation of movement in the air + jump momentum. Just off the top of my head:- Jump shots while kiting: you can jump away from someone, do a 180 in the air, fire off an instant ranged nuke that requires you to face the enemy, do another 180, land, and repeat. You are essentially hitting your enemy with attacks that require forward facing, while still moving forward at 100% speed (strafing MAY be slower than moving forward, and backpedalling is definitely much slower).- Jumping charges: A really obnoxious move. If you keep jumping while running away from a melee enemy with a charge, it is very likely that you'll be mid-jump when he uses his charge move. He'll end up where you were, while the jump momentum will carry you out of melee range (and possibly out of LOS). Roots or stuns that the jump applies will still hit you, but you'll be in a much better position to do something about it.- Jumping other CC: Same as above, if you see an enemy charging a CC that you can't avoid in time, you can jump behind LOS. You'll get CC'd halfway through the jump, but end up being out of LOS for your enemy, so he has to spend precious seconds to get in LOS (also melee range, which is probably not advantageous for him). As a healer, this has saved my butt plenty of times in wow/rift.

Now, I'm not 100% jump momentum works in TOR like it does in WOW and RIFT -- but I have a hunch it does.

Yes and no. You travel slower while jumping than while running so you're not going to be able to use jump-spin-nuke while keeping yourself out of melee range in a SWTOR kiting scenario - the melee guy will catch up with you if you do that.

Yeah, you don't need to do jumpshots in SWTOR. Any instant casts can be shot behind you easily just by strafing at full run speed (one reason why there is no need to backpeddle in PvP). Jumping slows you down.

So I need help playing my scoundrel and commando (both heals) in pvp. My survival rate seems pretty low compared to other healers. I guess the first thing I should do is do what they do: cc and run away like crazy.

eta: also I don't remember if I asked this or not but how exactly does defense and shield chance work together? For example if I had 30% in each do I have a 60% chance for defense/shield or is it 51(30 + 70*0.3)%?

The main thing with my scoundrel is I don't stay still unless I absolutely have to. Does your scoundrel have his free instant heal (and the talent that makes it free if you cast it on someone below 30% (I think?) health)? My entire world changed once I got that.

I didn't like the commando (well, the BH equivilent) in PvP because you have to stand still a lot more, and fuck that!

The main thing with my scoundrel is I don't stay still unless I absolutely have to. Does your scoundrel have his free instant heal (and the talent that makes it free if you cast it on someone below 30% (I think?) health)? My entire world changed once I got that.

I didn't like the commando (well, the BH equivilent) in PvP because you have to stand still a lot more, and fuck that!

Pretty sure I don't have that; the last thing I got was the stackable HoT.